I haven't read the syllabus for this course, and I've only really been communicating to Dr. Lowell, so those of you out there who are wondering who this guy is and if he is dead, as Mark Twain once wrote, The rumors of my demise are overstated. I suppose since everyone else has put together a critique of the class I should do the same. I think this course has a lot of potential. I am learning a lot, if even just from reading the interesting articles. I have an extreme distaste for the methodology used at times, I spent too many years in the private sector working with people and fixing the problems of people who were "always on" and "always connected" to where the information overload and the neccessity of connection to everything all at once while getting no real depth of knowledge burned me completely out. Having to keep track of 23 different people at 23 different times with daily assignments that seem to have no correlation between the others at their present point in the timeline of the course is extremely frustrating, but as long as I take it one day at a time I am ok. The problem with taking it one day at a time is that I really only have two days to do the coursework. I work two jobs, and I am very active in my church, so the only real days I have to do anything are friday nights and saturday mornings. To look in feedreader and see 350 unanswered posts is incredibly discouraging, but I can't exactly tell the three sections of university students I teach, plus the two fourth grade and two fifth grade classes I work with on a daily basis "I have to catch up on an article for a course I am working on" at the same time. I am afraid that I will end up dropping the ball on this course like I did with a course or two with my MAT program. I will get used to the daily grind eventually, and work out a happy equilibrium, but I am one that wishes that like most of my other online courses, I would just get a list of 16 blackboard discussion prompts, a term paper rubric emailed via MS Word, and be done with it on my own time. The post about sylvia martinez mirrors EXACTLY what I want to do with my classrooms, should I ever get the opportunity to be a fulltime high school teacher again. The analysis of a traditional classroom and its efficacy is a neccessary one, as it appears that the larger the district, the larger the outpour of public funds, with increasing diminishing returns- Metro D.C., DETROIT, et al, I am looking in your general directions. I think I am done ranting, now.